Election 2012

During an appearance on Concerned Women for America’s radio program, Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) admitted that his bill to ban abortions based on the race or sex of the fetus wasn’t so much about stopping race or sex-based abortions but a ploy to criminalize abortion overall. “The people on the pro-abortion side say, ‘Trent you have a much bigger issue and a much bigger agenda here than just sex-selection and race-selection abortion,’” Franks said, “and I think the honest thing for me to do is say yes that’s true.” Franks has long been a proponent of the discreditedassertion that abortion providers are deliberately trying to abort black children in order to exterminate African Americans, even arguing that black women were better off under slavery than today when abortion is legal.

Later in the interview, Franks repeated his extreme and conspiratorial claims about President Obama, arguing that his reelection would lead to constitutional and security crises and even the emergence of “nuclear terrorism.”

The people on the pro-abortion side say, ‘Trent you have a much bigger issue and a much bigger agenda here than just sex-selection and race-selection abortion,’ and I think the honest thing for me to do is say yes that’s true. I want someday for children of all sexes and all races to be protected and that’s definitely an agenda for me and I think it should be for all people in the human family. But at least we can get together on this much, that it’s wrong to abort a little child because it’s the wrong sex or the wrong race, if we can’t come together on that then I’m afraid that any hope of commonalty and unity in this country is lost forever.

…

The greatest challenge we have, and I’m going to be partisan for a moment but its reality, we must change presidents. At all costs, we must change presidents. This is the most pro-abortion president in the history of the country and not only will the unborn suffer terribly, the Constitution itself will essentially be abrogated by his Supreme Court nominees, our national security will be fundamentally weakened, we will become a regional power and we will face potentially nuclear terrorism in our world and unfortunately we will step into the shadow of European socialism if this president is reelected and the Congress won’t have anything to do to stop that. The equation is very, very clear, Americans must change presidents and I pray we understand that for the sake of the unborn and essentially everything else that we care about in this country.

The main themes from this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference were not terribly surprising to anyone paying attention to the GOP presidential primary. According to CPAC speakers, President Obama is a “socialist, Marxist president” bent on destroying the country and the Constitution, and the nation will not survive if he is re-elected. “Compromise” is a four-letter word. Health care reform is tyranny.Contraception is tyranny. TSA searches are tyranny. You get the idea.

But there were also moments of insight into aspects of the conservative movement, often coming from smaller rooms and panels, like actor Stephen Baldwin’s declaration that “separation of church and state can kiss my ass” and the anti-multicultural, anti-diversity discussion which featured the founder of a white-nationalist website. Here are a few additions to the excellent RWW coverage of CPAC by Kyle and Brian.

Screw the Vote

As we have reported, Republicans are waging aggressive voter suppression campaigns across the country, including voter ID laws and voter registration restrictions supposedly needed to prevent “voting fraud.” At CPAC, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton hosted a press conference to talk about the group’s “Election Integrity Project,” which is suing states that Judicial Watch says have not done enough to clean up their voter registration lists.Panelists claimed that “rampant election fraud” took place in the last two election cycles – there’s no real evidence to back up that claim – and complained that the Obama administration’s Justice Department is selectively enforcing the Voting Rights Act.Fitton said that having the DOJ meet with representatives from Project Vote and ACORN is “like having the mafia running the FBI.” Another speaker represented True the Vote, an outgrowth of Houston Tea Party group King Street Patriots, which hosted a fundraising event last year with a speaker who believes:

Registering [poor people] to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country — which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote.

True the Vote is backing states whose voter ID laws have been challenged by the Justice Department and recruiting volunteers to challenge signatures gathered by those seeking to recall Wisconsin’s anti-labor governor Scott Walker.

The Federal Government’s War on Clean Underwear

It is an article of faith among many right-wing activists and candidates that health, safety, and environmental regulations are oten unconstitutional and are destroying the American economy.Americans for Tax Reform and its affiliate Cost of Government Center sponsored a panel dubbed “The Red Tape War: How the Regulatory Burden and Growing Nanny State Threaten Prosperity.” The group’s Mattie Duppler described regulation as an ongoing “war on consumers and taxpayers.”Sam Kazman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute said that energy efficiency regulations had caused a steep decline in the quality of top-loading washing machines, and talked about a campaign his group had run to have people send virtual underwear to the undersecretary of the Department of Energy. (Turns out that campaign was in 2007 during the George W. Bush administration)

Beyond Obstructionism to Nullification

One Newt Gingrich campaign theme has been pledging that as president he would ignore Supreme Court decisions he disagrees with and abolish the jobs of federal judges who don’t share his view of the Constitution.A couple of groups at CPAC – the Tenth Amendment Center and the Foundation for a Free Society – held a series of events to promote nullification, the idea that the states should similarly ignore federal laws that they believe are unconstitutional.In fact, they want to go far beyond ignoring such laws.Speakers introducing a documentary on nullification praised an Arizona bill that would not only declare the federal health care law null and void in the state, but would also make any agent of the government who tries to enforce the law guilty of a felony.The documentary featured state legislators as well as speakers from the Oath Keepers and the John Birch Society.

Here Sharia Comes!

Pamela Geller hosted a panel on Sharia, at which speakers complained about the room they were given and about their supposed mistreatment at the hands of CPAC – though other panels met in the same room and the “Islamic Law” panel was listed in the conference program.Geller and fellow panelist Robert Spencer attacked panelists from a previous, more thoughtful, panel on religious liberty which defended the religious rights of American Muslims.Also speaking was North Carolina congressional candidate Ilario Pantano, who said he was once charged with murder for killing terrorists in Iraq [charges were dropped] and who denounced “political correctness run amok.” Pantano praised discredited “historian” David Barton for telling the “truth” about America’s founding and called the misnamed “Ground Zero Mosque” a “desecration of an American holy site and an American national battlefield.”

Civics Education = David Barton, the Bible, and American Exceptionalism

In a panel on civics education, Matthew Spalding, VP for American Studies at Heritage Foundation praised the battle over textbook standards in Texas, in which David Barton and other Religious Right activists pushed to infuse far-right ideology into social science books.

Those are the battles that matter, especially big states because they control the textbooks. Texas had a great battle, and the media hated it, the left went crazy, but it’s an extremely reasonable curriculum improvement, and they focus on very good things. It’s a solid, good model….Civic education is not just in the classroom. You must understand the effect that public discussion about these questions, about history and about the meaning of our country affect politics, politics affects elections, elections affects state boards and things that make the curriculum.

Another panelist, Larry Schweikart, author of Patriot’s History of the United States, argued that civics education must be grounded in “American exceptionalism.”

All of the founders understood that the bible and biblical virtues were necessary to a good education, and a civic order. So once again it comes down to those four pillars of American exceptionism: common law, a predominantly Christian religion, property rights, and free markets.

Limit Government, Not Campaign Speeches

One of the final sessions before Sarah Palin’s closing remarks was intended to give a number of congressional candidates challenging Republican incumbents the chance to make 5-minute speeches.A couple candidates were shortchanged by the fact that Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock, running to unseat Sen. Richard Lugar, took about twice as much as his allotted time and Ted Cruz, running against Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in the GOP Senate primary, ran even longer.

Mourdock devoted his speech to the need for conservatives to “conquer”- conquerthe media, educators, advocates of reproductive choice, big-spenders, anyone who thinks America is just an “average” nation, and all who “wish to crush our traditional American values,” presumably including 35-year Senate incumbent Lugar.Repeated Mourdock again and again, “Conquer we must!”

Cruz, who was also given time at last year’s Awakening Conference at Liberty University, argued that liberty is under assault like never before, that President Barack Obama is the “most radical president this country has ever seen,” and that the U.S. Senate is the key battleground.Cruz, who hopes to follow in the electoral footsteps of Florida’s Marco Rubio, is like Rubio the child of Cubans who came to the U.S. in the 1950s.Cruz brags that he is the only candidate this year supported by all four of his favorite senators: Jim DeMint, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, and Pat Toomey, and called his primary “ground zero” in the battle between the Tea Party and the GOP’s “moderate establishment.”

Yesterday on Family Talk, James Dobson and Daniel Lapin came to the conclusion that ‘the pill’ paved the way for the destruction of civilization by increasing sexual promiscuity and reducing masculinity. Today, Dobson blamed Bill Clinton for the growing acceptance of “illicit sexuality” among politicians. Dobson, a prominent endorser of Rick Santorum, even lamented that the public isn’t having serious problems with supporting “an admitted womanizer,” Newt Gingrich. The Focus on the Family founder earlier claimed that he wouldn’t support Gingrich because he didn’t want the First Lady to be a former mistress.

Dobson: In the mid- to late-1990s, Bill Clinton, as president, had an affair with Monica Lewinsky. And the popular culture and the elites in media and in government rose to his defense and said that character really doesn’t matter, what matters is that a president is able to do his job properly, and the moral aspect was discounted. And something changed in our culture, not just about Bill Clinton, but about our attitudes toward our leaders being involved in illicit sexuality. And we’re seeing it right now on a number of fronts. I’m going to have to really come close to the limits here, but one of our candidates has been an admitted womanizer, and he has indicated, even to me, that he’s been forgive for that and that only God knows, and I accept that. But the attitude of the public toward that has changed. It is reflective of what happened in the 1990s.

Later in the program, Lapin argued that America is facing economic decline because of the removal of “religious restraints to rampant sexuality,” as men lose “self-discipline” and society is “effeminized.” Lapin then claimed that as “a more feminine society,” America has become more open to the “brutal and violent culture” of “fundamentalist Islam,” which he says is the only way “to explain the love affair that America’s leftwing and secularized elites have with Islam.”

So there you have it: feminism is responsible for the moral failings of men, economic decline and Islamic radicals.

Lapin: Once you remove the religious restraints to rampant sexuality, and all you got to do is relax those religious restraints and male nature will take care of the rest and bring about the decline of a civilization, one of the mechanisms is of course as we’ve discussed economic because in a sense it requires the same kind of control and self-discipline to get up every single morning and go to work whether you like it or not as it takes to restrain various appetites. So when you weaken one muscle you weaken everything else as well and not only do we have a tendency on the part of a society that has relaxed all form of sexual restraint to also go into free fall economically but what also happens is such a society tends towards becoming a more feminine society in a sense. Islam, fundamentalist Islam, which is essentially a brutal and violent culture is seducing a somewhat effeminized American culture because there is no other way to explain the love affair that America’s leftwing and secularized elites have with Islam.

People For the American Way today called on GOP presidential candidates to speak out against the inclusion of a white nationalist leader this week at
CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference.

The conference—which will be addressed by Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and other GOP leaders— will be hosting Peter Brimelow, the founder of VDARE, a
white nationalist website which frequently publishes the works of anti-Semitic and racist writers. Brimelow, an immigrant from Great Britain, has
expressed fear of the loss of America’s white majority, blames non-white immigrants for social and economic problems and urges the Republican Party to
give up on minority voters and focus on winning the white vote. He said that a New York City subway is the same as an Immigration and Naturalization
Service waiting room, “an underworld that is not just teeming but also almost entirely colored.”

“It’s shocking that the CPAC would provide a platform for someone like Brimelow,” said Michael Keegan, President of People For the American Way.
“Responsible GOP leaders should speak out against the bigotry and hatred that Brimelow and VDARE push on a regular basis. That’s doubly true of anyone
who aspires to the presidency of the United States. Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum need to make it perfectly clear that they won’t be
silent when they’re confronted with racism and anti-Semitism.”

VDARE has published the work of people like Robert Weissberg, who says that black and Hispanic students are responsible for problems in the American
education system, Marcus Epstein, the Youth for Western Civilization leader who karate-chopped a black woman after calling her a n****r (and later pled
guilty to assault), and J. Philippe Rushton of the eugenicist Pioneer Fund.

“The inclusion of Brimelow is all the more galling given the fact that another group, GOProud, was excluded from the conference simply for advocating
equality for gay people,” said Keegan. “CPAC should make very clear that hatred has no place in our civic discourse.”

As we have noted before, Religious Right leaders - in particular, supporters of Newt Gingrich - are absolutely certain that the re-election of President Obama spells certain doom not only for America, but for all of Western Civilization.

Gingrich's most vocal supporter, Jim Garlow, was a guest on "Wallbuilders Live" today where he discussed the rise of the so-called "Evangelical Left." Garlow insisted that he didn't even know what that term means because there is only one correct Biblical position on issues like abortion and marriage and those who do not hold such positions are simply violating Biblical truth.

As such, there are those who are right and there are those, on the Left, who are wrong and it is time for pastors to take a stand in their pulpits and preach this message to their congregations. Because if they don't, Garlow warned, the next election, and all hope for America, will be lost:

We have about ten months left to save this nation. It's not that the nation will cease to exist after November, it's just that the die will have been cast in such a way that we will never, ever be able to reclaim that which we once had. Whether it be in the arena of reclaiming safety for the womb, the definition of marriage, or of the economic fact that we're $15 trillion in the whole now and a $110 trillion in unfunded liabilities - this is a nation that will be decimated, it will be unsalvageable after November if we cannot get it turned. Even with the strongest leadership that we might be able to elect it is still going to be a very hard task because of how far down we have fallen both morally and economically as it relates to biblical understanding.

Speaking at the "Pray for America" rally in Nevada on Friday night, Newt Gingrich called for passage of legislation requiring all schools and universities to teach the Declaration of Independence so that every student would learn that there is a Creator who has endowed us with certain unalienable rights and realize that government exists to serve the people, unlike President Obama who thinks the people exist to serve him:

We are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. This is really central to all of America. God gives every one of you personally sovereignty. Your rights come from God. You loan some of that to the state in a document called the Constitution, which begins "we the people." Doesn't say "we the lawyers, we the politicians, we the bureaucrats, we the judges" ... it says "we the people."

Now, that means in America, you are a citizen and you loan power to the government, which is your servant. In Europe, you are a subject and government tells you what to do. And this is, candidly, the central issue with Barack Obama: he thinks he's a European politician who should be teaching us what to do so he's happy.

At the American Heartland Forum in Columbia, Missouri before the upcoming presidential primary in the state (which is non-binding and awards zero delegates), Rick Santorum joined Focus on the Family founder James Dobson to push the myth that the recently passed health care reform law would lead to ‘death panels.’ Santorum has made criticism of the law a chief aspect of his campaign and during the event repeated James Dobson’s claim, which he says he learned from a caller on a talk radio show, that stroke patients over the age of 70 “will not be granted treatment,” a charge the Health and Human Services Department called “absolutely false.” Challenging health care reform with debunked smears, unfortunately, is not new from either talk radio or Republican presidential candidates.

To bolster this claim, Santorum rehashed another myth about the dangers of government involvement in healthcare by maintaining that euthanasia represents “10% of all deaths in the Netherlands,” and “ObamaCare” will surely lead the U.S. down a similar path. However, a recent study shows that just 1.8% of all deaths in the Netherlands, where euthanasia is legal, are a result of physician-assisted suicide, and the rate is going down.

Santorum also seemed to express nostalgia for the days of back alley abortions when abortion was a crime and “people who did abortions were in the shadows, people who were considered really bad doctors.”

The Associated Pressreported from the event on the ‘death panels’ claim:

Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum on Friday backed prominent conservative James Dobson's claim that President Barack Obama's administration would block medical treatment for stroke patients over age 70. Professional medical groups have called such statements bogus.

During a forum inside a church, Dobson cited an anonymous caller to a conservative radio show who said "for patients over 70 years of age, that advanced neurosurgical care was not generally indicated." The caller claimed that patients would be offered "comfort care" unless a panel of bureaucrats approved more significant treatment.

"That's called 'death panels.' Sarah Palin was right. That means death to that person," said Dobson, founder of the conservative group Focus on the Family.

Palin, the GOP's vice presidential nominee in 2008, coined the term "death panel" in response to the administration's health care law, although her argument was roundly criticized as inaccurate.

Santorum seemed to go along with Dobson, arguing that government-run health care would result in limits on care. He brought Obama's health and human services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, into the argument.

"When you become a cost, then the government starts to allocate resources," Santorum said. "Well, who should we be allocating these resources to? We shouldn't be allocating it to 70-year-old of people who have strokes, according to Kathleen Sebelius."

The regulation does not exist, medical professionals said.

The American Association of Neurological Surgeons and the Congress of Neurological Surgeons said in a joint statement they were "unaware of any federal government document directing that advanced neurosurgery for patients over 70 years of age will not be indicated and only supportive care treatment will be provided."

…

The Health and Human Services Department also rejected the allegation. "These claims are absolutely false and the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and the Congress of Neurological Surgeons have both gone on the record to denounce these false rumors as well," spokeswoman Erin Shields said in a statement.

Dobson, who has endorsed Santorum's candidacy and has joined him at campaign-style appearances, seemed unaware of the disputed statement.

"Secretary Sebelius in the Obama administration, within the Obamacare plan, decreed a few weeks ago that as of January first of next year, if you are over 60 years of age — I beg your pardon — if you're over 70 years of age and you have a cranial bleed — blood is running into your brain, which is a horrible condition, it destroys the brain tissue, if you survive it, you will never the same again — they decreed that you will not be granted treatment," Dobson said.

At the American Heartland Forum in Columbia, Missouri before the upcoming presidential primary in the state (which is non-binding and awards zero delegates), Rick Santorum joined Focus on the Family founder James Dobson to push the myth that the recently passed health care reform law would lead to ‘death panels.’ Santorum has made criticism of the law a chief aspect of his campaign and during the event repeated James Dobson’s claim, which he says he learned from a caller on a talk radio show, that stroke patients over the age of 70 “will not be granted treatment,” a charge the Health and Human Services Department called “absolutely false.” Challenging health care reform with debunked smears, unfortunately, is not new from either talk radio or Republican presidential candidates.

To bolster this claim, Santorum rehashed another myth about the dangers of government involvement in healthcare by maintaining that euthanasia represents “10% of all deaths in the Netherlands,” and “ObamaCare” will surely lead the U.S. down a similar path. However, a recent study shows that just 1.8% of all deaths in the Netherlands, where euthanasia is legal, are a result of physician-assisted suicide, and the rate is going down.

Santorum also seemed to express nostalgia for the days of back alley abortions when abortion was a crime and “people who did abortions were in the shadows, people who were considered really bad doctors.”

The Associated Pressreported from the event on the ‘death panels’ claim:

Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum on Friday backed prominent conservative James Dobson's claim that President Barack Obama's administration would block medical treatment for stroke patients over age 70. Professional medical groups have called such statements bogus.

During a forum inside a church, Dobson cited an anonymous caller to a conservative radio show who said "for patients over 70 years of age, that advanced neurosurgical care was not generally indicated." The caller claimed that patients would be offered "comfort care" unless a panel of bureaucrats approved more significant treatment.

"That's called 'death panels.' Sarah Palin was right. That means death to that person," said Dobson, founder of the conservative group Focus on the Family.

Palin, the GOP's vice presidential nominee in 2008, coined the term "death panel" in response to the administration's health care law, although her argument was roundly criticized as inaccurate.

Santorum seemed to go along with Dobson, arguing that government-run health care would result in limits on care. He brought Obama's health and human services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, into the argument.

"When you become a cost, then the government starts to allocate resources," Santorum said. "Well, who should we be allocating these resources to? We shouldn't be allocating it to 70-year-old of people who have strokes, according to Kathleen Sebelius."

The regulation does not exist, medical professionals said.

The American Association of Neurological Surgeons and the Congress of Neurological Surgeons said in a joint statement they were "unaware of any federal government document directing that advanced neurosurgery for patients over 70 years of age will not be indicated and only supportive care treatment will be provided."

…

The Health and Human Services Department also rejected the allegation. "These claims are absolutely false and the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and the Congress of Neurological Surgeons have both gone on the record to denounce these false rumors as well," spokeswoman Erin Shields said in a statement.

Dobson, who has endorsed Santorum's candidacy and has joined him at campaign-style appearances, seemed unaware of the disputed statement.

"Secretary Sebelius in the Obama administration, within the Obamacare plan, decreed a few weeks ago that as of January first of next year, if you are over 60 years of age — I beg your pardon — if you're over 70 years of age and you have a cranial bleed — blood is running into your brain, which is a horrible condition, it destroys the brain tissue, if you survive it, you will never the same again — they decreed that you will not be granted treatment," Dobson said.

As we noted last week, Newt Gingrich was scheduled to appear at a New Apostolic Reformation-affiliated church in Nevada with Jim Garlow on Friday evening for a "Pray for America" event ahead of the Republican caucus on Saturday.

Gingrich, who was the only candidate on the bill, kicked off his address by inviting all the children under the age of twelve in the audience to join him and Callista on stage, explaining that they are the reason he is running for president because they are the future of America and Gingrich intends to make sure that they do not grow up in a secular nation dominated by elites who hate Christianity:

This is the future of America and the reason we're here is we want to learn what kind of future are they going to have. Are they going to have a future of opportunity, of safety, of freedom? Or are they going to have an opportunity of dependence on government, control from Washington, danger from foreigners? And this election may be the most important election of their lifetime and they can't vote yet ... and so, in a sense, we have to stand in as trustees of their country, all of us, every one of us has to stand in.

If I am president, these children are not going to grow up in a secular country dominated by elites who despise our history, dislike our culture, and dislike our religion. These children are going to grow up in a country which is genuinely free and which worships God, which is the source of our rights!

We have written several posts in the past about how Newt Gingrich's leading Religious Right supporter, Jim Garlow, manages to straddle the increasingly thin line between the more traditional Religious Right movement and the growing New Apostolic Reformation spiritual warfare movement.

On Friday, February 3, 2012, 7pm – 8:30pm, there will be a Pray for America prayer meeting at International Church of Las Vegas (ICLV) hosted by Pastor Paul Goulet. Many local leaders and media are expected to be attending. Also, Newt Gingrich has confirmed his attendance at the prayer meeting.

Lead Pastor, Summerlin Campus Pastors Paul and Denise Goulet are the senior leaders of International Church of Las Vegas. With decades of shared experience in ministry, this dynamic couple has a desire to change Las Vegas and the world. With a strong apostolic anointing, Pastor Paul has made it his mission in life to impart the power of the Holy Spirit into leaders worldwide. He travels extensively and has established an international network of churches, Bible schools and pastors, with the ultimate goal of building 2000 churches by the year 2020. As Senior Pastor of ICLV, the host of a weekly television program, and the author of many books, Pastor Paul's messages of vision and destiny are heard by tens of thousands around the world.

When Mitt Romney stepped on his Florida primary victory message by declaring that he wasn’t concerned about the very poor – and that he’d patch any holes that just might be in their safety net – most observers thought his mistake was declaring disinterest in the poor. But to right-wing activists, Romney’s bigger problem was his support for any kind of social safety net.

The Weekly Standard’s John McCormack called Romney’s comments “unconservative,” saying that “The standard conservative argument is that a conservative economic agenda will help everyone.”

“The safety net contributes to poverty,” declared Rush Limbaugh. “It does not solve it.” Tea Party favorite Sen. Jim DeMint told a reporter, “Those are the programs that are hurting, not just the poor, but our country.”

Religious Right leaders added another touch: the safety net is un-Biblical. Yesterday, Liberty Counsel pushed out a statement promoting the Christian Reconstructionist notion that the Bible gives the government no role in addressing poverty:

Romney wrongly assumes that it is the role of government to provide more entitlements to help the poor. In fact, that is not the role of government. The historical biblical view of helping the poor is that they are best helped by individuals and the faith community. Government programs tend to enslave the poor in an endless cycle of poverty. The biblical model is that both, the giver and the recipient, are blessed. When government steps in between the giver and the recipient, the giver loses the blessing of giving and the recipient is often left in a worse, rather than better, position. Romney's statement that he would rely on government programs to help the poor indicates his intent to continue the same failed big government programs and policies….it is the duty of the church, the faith community, to look after the poor, the orphans, and the widows.

Longtime Religoius Right activist Gary Bauer made the same point in a USA Today column in January, arguing that “nowhere in the Bible are we told that government should take one man's money by force of law and give it to another man. Jesus' admonition was a personal command to share, not a command for Caesar to "spread the wealth around."

There are, of course, alternative views about what the Bible has to say. President Obama, speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast this week, cited the Biblical principal that much will be expected of the person who has been given much. (Laughably, Obama has been criticized by Ralph Reedfor discussing how his faith influenced his approach to policy-making.) Writing recently for Sojourner’s, an economically liberal evangelical group, Tim King called Bauer’s claims about scripture “false,” saying that biblical injunctions related to forgiveness of debts and the release of slaves are “forms of government mandated redistribution of wealth” and “laws concerned with justice not encouragements to charity.”

Focus on the Family founder and Family Talk host James Dobson appeared with Rick Santorum at a campaign rally in Colorado, which has its caucus on February 7. Dobson joined other Religious Right leaders in endorsing Santorum and hailed him for fighting against same-sex marriage, and reportedly also backed Santorum because he disapproved of Newt Gingrich’s third wife Callista. Dobson said that neither Mitt Romney nor Gingrich are authentic conservatives, lauding Santorum for caring “about the moral integrity of this nation” and his consistent “fight for marriage and fight for the unborn.” While Dobson stressed social issues, the former Pennsylvania senator claimed that his image as a “social conservative” was responsible for his third place defeat in Florida:

After delivering a pointed version of his stump speech before a crowd of more than 1,200 people at Mr. Biggs Family Funhouse here, Santorum introduced Dobson, the head of the conservative group Focus on the Family.

Dobson, who endorsed Santorum in January, made the point that he was at the event “as a private individual,” and this disclaimer may have allowed him to be a bit more candid.

“It would appear to me that Mitt Romney is not a conservative,” Dobson said to much applause. “And Newt Gingrich is not – well I don’t know what he is. You’re the only true conservative in the race.”

The two men then had a conversation that veered more personal than political, with Dobson explaining the rationale behind his decision to support Santorum in the Republican primary.

“I believe you really care about the moral integrity of this nation and I believe you will fight for it,” Dobson said to Santorum. “Fight for marriage and fight for the unborn child and fight for the all the other principles that matters so much to me and so many others.”

During his opening remarks, Santorum suggested that his image as a staunch social conservative potentially damaged his efforts to appeal to the majority of the Republican electorate whose primary concern for 2012 is the flagging economy.

“I had the highest favorability as anybody in Florida,” Santorum said. “But I didn’t win, even though I had the most positive – highest positive, lowest negative. I didn’t win, and you ask the people why, ‘well, we’re not sure you can win. People think you’re a social conservative and we need someone who’s an economic conservative.’”

But looking at the issues, Santorum argued, none of the three other major GOP candidates differ in their stated positions on social issues. “What makes me more socially conservative than they? Some would suggest that I actually believe what I’m saying as opposed to them,” Santorum said.

Today, French penned an op-ed for CNN calling on his fellow evangelicals to drop their support for Newt Gingrich and, in making his case, he certainly didn't pull any punches, calling Gingrich an arrogant, bullying serial adulterer:

If character counts, then so do values like fidelity, honesty, humility and charity. Sadly, Gingrich fails on all these counts ... Churchgoing evangelicals have one of the lowest divorce rates in the country. Gingrich is a thrice-married, serial admitted adulterer.

While the former House speaker tries to change the subject, biblically literate Christians understand that his conduct is a real and present issue. Simply put, a man doesn’t cleanse the moral stain of adultery by marrying his mistress.

Matthew 19:9 is crystal clear: “I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery.” Gingrich has divorced his wife and married his mistress twice.

...

[I]s there a more arrogant public figure in American political life than Gingrich? His self-regard is legendary. He’s compared himself to world historical figures from Ronald Reagan to Margaret Thatcher to Abraham Lincoln to Pericles.

He has said that people like him stand between America and Auschwitz. His self-congratulatory statements fill press releases, and former colleagues tell tales of his erratic and bullying behavior. Is that the right witness for evangelicals?

During a tele-townhall hosted by Personhood USA along with radio talk show host Steve Deace and Liberty Counsel chairman Mat Staver, Newt Gingrich maintained that as president he will work to “undo the damage done in the ’60s and ’70s” to American society “by a movement that somehow thought it could reinvent being human.” The former Speaker of the House went on to claim that “elites have driven us towards a kind of paganism” similar to the pagan world of the Roman Empire the Apostle Paul found himself in. Cries of burgeoning “paganism” have become customary for Gingrich, who on a previous conference call dubbed same-sex marriage a “pagan behavior” that is part of “the rise of paganism” in the U.S.

Gingrich: One of the great challenges we have is that we now have to undo the damage done in the ’60s and ’70s by a movement that somehow thought it could reinvent being human and the fact is it couldn’t. There are very wise rules that have grown up over a very long time and I think when we try to break those rules—I always tell people you could understand the world we’re in right this minute if you can come to grips with Paul’s letters because in many ways he’s writing about being Christian in a pagan world, and a great deal of what’s happened is that our elites have driven us towards a kind of paganism that they don’t think of as paganism, they think it’s modern and clever, but in fact it’s not anything new or different. So I think one of the great challenges for us is to stand up for religion and to stand up for the lessons, both in personal life and in religious freedom, that are at the heart of any kind of healthy society.

Today on Washington Watch Weekly with Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) laced into President Obama, whom he called the “abortion president,” for appointing “radically pro-abortion” people to the government who are promoting “evil” with an “anti-child, anti-woman mentality.”

Smith: When you have the coercive power of the state in the hands of the abortion president who litmus tests virtually everybody in his administration to ensure that they are radically pro-abortion and very often come right out of the ranks of Planned Parenthood or NARAL or EMILY’s List to hold these positions and then they do their dirty work every day of the week and then they fund non-governmental organizations like Planned Parenthood who then continue promoting this evil, and this anti-child, anti-woman mentality.

Smith went on to tell Perkins that the Obama administration seeks “to remake America as the culture of death” and if he wins re-elections, it “will be significantly worse in terms of extremism in promoting both the abortion issue as well as the homosexual agenda.”

Smith: They are very coercive in this administration, there is nothing benign or ‘come along and let us try to convince you,’ they tell you under power of huge penalties, and that is what ObamaCare is all about, it is riddled with penalties, everyone knows about the one if you don’t buy health insurance you can get fined. But when it comes to the moral issues, they seek to remake America as the culture of death.

…

The second four years, the second term of a Barack Obama will be significantly worse in terms of extremism in promoting both the abortion issue as well as the homosexual agenda.

On Wednesday, Newt Gingrich held a conference call with faith leaders during which he declared that the push for marriage equality is an example of "the rise of paganism" while his supporters warned that failure to elect Gingrich would quite literally spell the end of America and Western Civilization.

On Thursday, the Mitt Romney campaign held its own conference call with its own faith leaders who ripped Gingrich for his arrogance, recklessness, and "despicable behavior":

The Mitt Romney campaign held a conference call this morning with social conservative Republicans in Florida, touting the former Massachusetts governor's integrity and values and contrasting him to Newt Gingrich. Leading the call were Pastor David Janney of Orlando Baptist Church, the largest church in Orlando, former U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon of Indialantic, and Jay Sekulow, the chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice and a prominent advocate for religious freedom.

Pastor Janney said he's watched Romney being vetted and noted his marriage of 42 years, five children and 16 grandchildren: "When I look at his life I'm not concerned about being embarrassed or distracted by his personal issues."

Weldon said he was one of the members of congress who tried to oust Gingrich as U.S. House Speaker. "With Newt it was kind of like every day we didn't know what he was gonna say, we didn't know what he was going to be doing, he was just a little bit unpredictable," Weldon said. "It worries me the idea of him being in the oval office."

...

State Rep. Dennis Baxley, former leader of the Christian Coalition of Florida, also spoke on the call, saying Romney "shares our Christian values and will protect our religious freedom."

"When your choosing a leader it's about integrity. The hardest thing to maintain in any leader is those essential qualities of humility and purity. ... I'm very concerned about Newt Gingrich on that front." Baxley called Gingrich "very arrogant on his moral failure - calling the press despicable for covering him instead of humbly seeking the forgiveness of his former wife and others for his own despicable behavior."

Yesterday, Newt Gingrich held another conference call for Religious Right supporters, seeking to mobilize them ahead of the Republican primary in Florida.

The call was hosted by Jim Garlow and featured several other of the Gingrich campaign's Faith Coalition leaders explaining why they had decided to support Gingrich ... and the consensus was that if President Obama wins re-election, it means the end of Western Civilization:

Mat Staver: I believe that if Speaker Gingrich wins Florida next Tuesday, he wins the nomination. If he wins the nomination, he beats President Barack Obama and we have not a cloud hanging over us in November and December of 2012 but we begin to see the clouds dissipating and some ray of sunshine of hope return to this land.

Jim Garlow: At the risk of sounding melodramatic, the United States as we know her will cease to exist as will, then, Western Civilization. Those who are discerning, those who are intuitive to what is happening morally and economically in our nation understand the truth.

George Barna: As you mentioned Jim, for the last twenty years I have steadfastly refused to endorse any individuals or organizations or products. But as I've analyzed the severity of America's situation today, I've come to believe that such self-restrictions are a luxury that we can no longer afford. So after carefully studying all the candidates in regards to the needs I just described and assessing their ability to win in November, I concluded that Newt Gingrich is the best man for the job.

Jim Garlow: We are in a situation that is so crisic in America, I'm actually stunned that President Obama could do this much destruction to the nation in a three year span. I never anticipated that this much harm in the moral and economic arenas of our nation could be brought on by one particular president.

Don Wildmon: This is not a typical election. This is an election unlike any ever held in our country. We're not just voting for a president; we're voting for the continuation of Western Civilization. If those who are listening think that what we enjoy, the freedoms we enjoy, the right to practice our Christan faith, is merely an accident and is there, it's not, people paid for it. And we can lose it, and we will lose it, if we lose this next election. What's at stake is everything that the human race, Western Civilization, has fought for for the last two thousand years.

When Gingrich joined the call, the thrice-married candidate served up some red meat to the audience by declaring that efforts to grant equal marriage rights to gays and lesbians are "pagan behaviors":

It's pretty simple: marriage is between a man and a woman. This is a historic doctrine driven deep into the Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, and it's a perfect example of what I mean by the rise of paganism. The effort to create alternatives to marriage between a man and a woman are perfectly natural pagan behaviors, but they are a fundamental violation of our civilization.

Finally, Gingrich explained that he didn't really have any interest in being president but decided that he had to do so because all the other Republicans are so terrible so that he had a moral obligation to step up and save this nation and that he would just magnanimously have to suffer the insults that come his way:

I want people to understand, I'm a volunteer. Callista and I had very long talks for over a year and then we talked with our two daughters and our two son-in-laws because we knew if we tried to offer help the country that we would be subjected to news media assaults, we'd be subjected to vicious gossip, we'd be subjected to people on the web saying horrible things and we'd be subjected to negative ads from our opponents. And we concluded that we are in so much trouble and we are in such grave danger of losing the America that we grew up in and the lack of Republican ability to articulate and communicate and defend is so great that both of us - this was a dual decision - we both concluded that we had a moral obligation to endure whatever comes and to at least offer, as citizens, to try and be of service.

Newt Gingrich’s campaign announced today that Dutch Sheets, a self-appointed apostle and a major figure in the New Apostolic Reformation, will join his Faith Leaders Coalition as a National Co-Chair. As first reported and confirmed by Rachel Tabachnick of Talk to Action, Sheets endorsed Gingrich and warned that America “cannot survive another 4 years of the current leadership”:

Dutch Sheets has endorsed Newt Gingrich for president, and will be joining the Gingrich Faith Leaders Coalition.

…

“Newt Gingrich is only one that I can confidently say has the heart, experience, backbone, Constitutional brilliance, and intellectual strength to defeat Obama and lead America back to greatness” said Sheets.

“The America we know and love—indeed, the America God and our founding fathers dreamed of and birthed—cannot survive another 4 years of the current leadership in Washington.”

Sheets is an avowed dominionist and at a recent event, The Gathering Eagles, he said that while he doesn’t think “that we’re going to take over everything and rule the earth completely for the Lord…we’re supposed to try.” While holding up a gavel in one hand and the word ‘family’ in the other, he said that Christians have become weak by emphasizing the ‘family’ and are now “lazy sheep,” calling on Christians to become “kingdom warriors” for dominion:

If God brought corrective but serious judgment to Israel, we are horribly deceived if we think it will not happen to us. If something doesn't happen to lessen this judgment—and it can be lessened—we are headed for very difficult times. The economy is going to be devastated. The stock market will go well below where it went a few months back—a crash is coming, and soon. More terrorism and violence will occur in our land, perhaps even war. In my spirit I've seen buildings crumbling and cities burning. Devastating natural disasters will take place. In general, hard times will be prevalent. Why is this so? Because we have turned from God and His ways. Consider the true condition of America. This assessment is bleak but accurate.

1) Our government is in decay. The current leaders of Congress promote homosexuality, abortion and socialism, while arrogantly ignoring God and the wishes of the people. They are proud, power-hungry, self-serving, career politicians, not the statesmen/women we so desperately need. Our President fits the same description. Along with the above, while honoring—in the White House—the Muslim day of prayer, homosexual activists and a coalition of atheists, he refused to honor the time-honored traditions surrounding the National Day of Prayer. And along with Congress and the President, we have many Judges with no regard for God's Word, the Constitution or our true history. The predictable verdict is in: America is in a moral and spiritual crisis of such magnitude that it is almost unbelievable.

2) What does this look like practically? From my grandparents' day until now, we have gone from 65% of Americans having a biblical worldview to now 4% of today's young people sharing these beliefs. This is staggering! Apart from an absolute miracle, which I believe is still possible, we have lost a generation of Americans to satan and secular humanism. Generally speaking, we are a narcissistic, self-loving nation that has accepted a culture of death, perversion, drugs and violence. We have murdered 51 million babies in the womb, and to satisfy the cry for a toleration of immorality and perversion, we are ready to throw away 6,000 years of honoring God's definition of marriage and family.

Later in the interview with Mefferd, Gingrich once again equated secular Americans with radical Islamists. “We are under attack from two directions: we have secularists who want to eliminate all reference to God in public life, and we have people in the radical Islamic world who want to find a way to impose on us a world that we don’t want to live in,” Gingrich said, “I think both of those are very genuine threats to us”:

Gingrich also told Mefferd that Obama has a “destructive” attitude towards Congress and is “pretty willing to capriciously break things up” because he doesn’t “respect anybody but his own judgment.” Such remarks are especially ironic coming from Gingrich, who is not known for modesty and has a long history of ethics troubles:

Mefferd: Many people think that there has been a flagrant abuse of power in the executive branch under this president, how will you conduct yourself differently if you end up being elected?

Gingrich: Well first of all I am going to try to work with Congress, not just run over it. I think that he has adopted an attitude which is very destructive. So start with that. I was in Congress for twenty years; I respect the Congress as an institution. My sense is that Obama doesn’t actually respect anybody but his own judgment and he doesn’t understand the idea of a larger system that has lasted for 230 years and that has an importance and a power beyond any one fight or beyond any one person and so he is pretty willing to capriciously break things up.

Romney, once a stalwart defender of Roe v. Wade, said President Obama shows a “disregard for the sanctity of human life [that] is absolutely appalling” and is leading an “assault on life” by rescinding the Mexico City Gag Rule, which bars the government from funding NGOs that use their own finances for family planning which include abortion services or referrals. Romney also distorted Obama’s statement marking the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, claiming that the President thinks pregnant women “can get rid of the child and therefore have an equal opportunity,” when actually Obama concluded his statement by saying that “we must also continue our efforts to ensure that our daughters have the same rights, freedoms, and opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.”

He went on to say that Obama is conducting an “assault on religion” through the administration’s opposition to employment discrimination on religious grounds and attempts to ensure that women cannot be refused birth control coverage in their insurance plans or medical procedures because of loopholes, calling it “an assault on religion unlike anything we have seen.”

Romney concluded his diatribe by attacking a push for equal rights for gays and lesbians as an “assault on marriage,” and pledged to promote the Federal Marriage Amendment and stop Obama from paving “the path to same-sex marriage.”

Romney: I think he is detached from reality when he says that he wants to ‘reclaim American values.’ There has been in my view an assault on American values since the beginning of his administration. Clearly from the beginning the assault on life with his abandonment of the Mexico City Policy and with the Vice President being sent to China and saying we understand the one-child policy there and of course the abuses associated with that policy are alarming and disturbing, and then on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade just a couple of days ago he said that the wonderful thing about Roe v. Wade is that it provides an equal opportunity for girls to equal boys, meaning that they don’t have to have a child anymore, if they become pregnant they can get rid of the child and therefore have an equal opportunity. The disregard for the sanctity of human life is absolutely appalling.

Then of course there’s the assault on religion. I think a lot of people were surprised that he felt that the government should be able to determine who is and who is not a minister and fortunately the Supreme Court disagreed with him on that, but now he’s gone forward and said that religious institutions, universities, hospitals and so forth, religious institutions have to provide free contraceptives to all their employees, even if that religious institution is opposed to the use of contraception, as in the case of the Catholic Church. Even in that regard, fighting to eliminate the conscience clause for health care workers who wish not to provide abortion services or contraceptives in their workplace, in their hospital for instance. It’s an assault on religion unlike anything we have seen.

There’s been an assault on marriage. I think he is very aggressively trying to pave the path to same-sex marriage. I would unlike this president defend the Defense of Marriage Act. I would also propose and promote once again an amendment to the constitution to define marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman.